Certificate in Attachment Theory and Skills

2025 Applications Now Open

10-day course, running monthly on Saturdays from September 2024 to July 2025

Take a deep dive into John Bowlby’s attachment theory exploring attachment behaviours and the lifelong need for attachment, from infancy to adulthood. This course delves into how different attachment styles influence personal and professional relationships, aiding individuals in comprehending their own patterns and fostering healthier interactions with others, whether as partners, caregivers, parents, friends, or within professional contexts such as client relations and leadership dynamics.

Duration: 

10 weeks (Sept 2025 – July 2026)

Start Date:

September 2025

Delivered:

Online (non-recorded sessions)

Course Fee: 

£1,632

Course Aims

To provide you with:

  • an introductory knowledge and understanding of attachment theory and research
  • an understanding of your own attachment patterns, how these have developed to protect you and how these might impact your professional and personal life
  • an understanding of how you can apply attachment patterns and these protective strategies to your personal and professional lives, for example as parents/caregivers/ partners, teachers, health and social care workers, and friends
  • an opportunity through skills and facilitated group work to learn more about yourself and how you interact with others and why and how they interact with and impact you

Who is the course aimed at?

All are welcome to apply for this course as we believe that most people will benefit from an understanding of attachment theory as it can be applied to both your personal and professional life.

Reasons for applying :

  • An interest in exploring training as an attachment-based psychoanalyst.
  • You are involved in or interested in the care and welfare of children, including parents and carers, foster parents, parents through adoption, step-parents, childminders, grandparents, and nursery workers.
  • You are a health or social care worker- providing care for all ages through the life cycle, as attachment is life-long.
  • You work in maternity pre-natal and post-natal services, or as a doula.
  • You are a hospice workers or death doula.
  • You work in an educational setting from nursery to Higher Education.
  • You are a team leader or manager.
  • You work in a religious setting.
  • You work in the voluntary sector.

What are the dates of the course? 2025-2026

2025 Autumn Term 1

  • September 13th
  • October 4th
  • November 22nd
  • December 6th

2026 Spring Term 2

  • January 17th
  • February 7th
  • March 14th

2026 Summer Term 3

  • May 16th
  • June 13th
  • July 11th

The course spans ten weeks, with sessions delivered once a month on Saturdays online.

The course will take place from 10am-4pm with breaks

Approximate timings – these may be subject to change:

• Theoretical seminars 10.00 – 12.00
• Lunch 12.00 -12.45
• Skills based seminar 12.45 – 2.15
• Experiential group 2:30 – 4.00

NB: Weeks one and ten will be from 10-5:15pm as they will include a group tutorial from 4.15-5.15pm with the course tutor.

The course participants are expected to attend consistently and on time.
You will be asked to contribute your own thoughts and ideas and link these with your own personal and/or professional life.
You will be asked to keep your own journal in whatever way suits you.
You will write a short reflective piece towards the end of the course to consolidate your learning.
You will be required to maintain respect for your fellow students and recognise the confidentiality of their contributions.
You will be expected to actively engage in all the activities including the skills-based training and the experiential group.
You will need to have access to technology which enables a Zoom link, from a private space which maintains confidentiality with minimal disruption when you are online.
You will be required to complete any pre-course reading or other preparation such as watching a webinar or listening to a podcast.

Yes, you will need to complete an application form and undertake a 30-minute interview. There is an interview fee of £50

There are no formal criteria for a place on the course. We are looking for participants who actively want to learn about attachment theory and will engage in the learning process.

No, there is no assessment process, and no grades will be given during the course. Your reflective writing will be discussed with your tutor.

The certificate is for attendance on the course. The full certificate is awarded through an 80% plus attendance.
If your attendance is below 80% we can still award you a certificate of attendance for the seminars actually attended.

About This Course

This course will provide you with an introduction to John Bowlby’s attachment theory. You will learn about the attachment system and attachment behaviours, and the lifelong need for attachment ‘from cradle to grave’. It is aimed at those seeking a deeper understanding of how attachment impacts personal and professional lives. It is therefore suitable for anyone who is keen to examine their own personal development, their relationships as a partner, caregiver, parent, and friend, as well as the professional seeking a deeper knowledge of attachment as applied to clients, work relationships, and leadership.

You will learn how different people will seek to create intimacy and closeness in their relationships whilst others seek to avoid it. How those who appear ‘clingy’ and those who appear ‘withdrawing’ may seek each other out and have a particular relationship dance which causes ongoing distress and unhappiness. Why do some panic at the slightest hint of rejection, and others appear rejecting? Why do some find it easy to trust and rely on others and some struggle to do this? Some people will spend much of their time thinking and talking about their relationships, and others not at all. An inconsistent way of relating can often confuse and frighten others away. Without an understanding of attachment styles, even loving relationships can be drawn into volatile and unhelpful dynamics, destroying the bonds we most value, with little or no understanding of why this has happened.

The way we have been ‘parented’ will impact our attachment style, and these patterns can be traced back through several generations. Some parents/caregivers will blame themselves for not being ‘good enough’ without understanding their own attachment style and how this may have impacted on their parenting style. With an attachment perspective, there is no blaming or shaming, but understanding.

Children and young people will have their own attachment styles and this can impact their relationships with parents/carers, teachers, friendships, and even their experience of school.

All professionals will take their attachment style into the workplace, impacting their behaviours, relationships with colleagues, and how they both lead and respond to authority.

This seminar will introduce the development of attachment theory, with a brief outline of the history of the theory, focusing on John Bowlby, his life and the development and core concepts of attachment.

We will learn about the attachment system and attachment behaviours, the scientific base of attachment, and the lifelong need for attachment ‘from cradle to grave’. We will discuss the concepts of the secure base and the circle of security. You will get to understand typical relational patterns of clinging and pursuing vs withholding and withdrawing whereby both party’s patterns can be exacerbated and how this, if not understood, can lead to unnecessary arguments or break up.

We will explore the impact of separation on the child from its primary caregiver. Why are children so distressed by the absence of their primary caregiver? What is our understanding of separation anxiety? We will also look at ‘psychological separation’, the emotional absence of the physically present caregiver and its impact on the child. We will make links to how this translates to adult relationships and where this can activate attachment strategies in a partnership leading to long-term animosity or a stalemate between a couple who, deep down, love each other.

This seminar will explore Bowlby’s view of mourning as a psychological process and bereavement as an irreversible form of separation. You will learn about Bowlby’s view of grief as attachment behaviour and its links with depression. You will learn how individuals, when they are unable to grieve or even know that early grief from childhood has been triggered, can fall into unuseful ways of being.

This seminar will focus on the quality of the child’s attachment to its caregiver. You will learn about Mary Ainsworth’s development of the Strange Situation test to classify childhood attachment patterns, and of the features of different attachment styles. You will be starting to understand how your early patterns have been shaped by the experience you have had of ‘care’, or lack of care and of your life experiences.

This seminar will focus on the assessment of adult attachment styles, and their correspondence to childhood attachment patterns. You will learn about Mary Main’s development of the Adult Attachment Interview, and how to recognize different attachment styles in others. We cover how, usually by the age of one, our patterns of relating (internal working models) are formed in the way that as adults, we make friends, relate to our partners, attract potential partners, ‘parent’ children, and relate to others in the workplace.

This seminar will explore how to recognise the preoccupied attachment styles and how this may impact on yourself, others and your personal and professional relationships. This strategy and internal working models can often be unuseful or wreak havoc in our relationships with others. We will consider how an early history of, often unreliable, hot and cold, rejecting or intrusive caregiving patterns, alternating with love and care, can lead to a preoccupied pattern of relating to others.

This seminar will explore how you can recognise the dismissive avoidant attachment style, and how this strategy may impact yourself, others, and your personal and professional relationships. We will consider how an early history, often of neglect, may lead to an avoidant dismissive style and the internal working model which may be present.

This seminar will focus on the disorganised attachment style, its origins in relational trauma, and its effects on adult mental health. You will learn about the whole range of emotional expression, from feelings of being uncontained and explosive to feelings of flatness and dullness.

This seminar will provide you with an opportunity to revisit the learning from the previous seminars and to understand how you can use this learning in all areas of your life.